Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

‘There will be no repercussions,’ Garvie said.

‘How do you know? Not that it matters now. Well, gentlemen, the facts are these. Drift Ice Station Zebra is officially classed as an Air Ministry meteorological station. Well, it belongs to the Air Ministry all right, but there’s not more than a couple of qualified meteorologists among its entire personnel.’

Admiral Garvie refilled the tooth-glass and passed it to me without a word, without a flicker of change in his expression. The old boy certainly knew how to play it cool.

‘What you will find there,’ I went on, ‘are some of the most highly skilled men in the world in the fields of radar, radio, infra-red and electronic computers, operating the most advanced instruments ever used in those fields. We know now, never mind how, the countdown succession of signals the Russians use in the last minute before launching a missile. There’s a huge dish aerial in Zebra that can pick up and amplify any such signals within seconds of it beginning. Then long-range radar and infra-red home in on that bearing and within three minutes of the rocket’s lift-off they have its height, speed and course pin-pointed to an infinitesimal degree of error. The computers do this, of course. One minute later the information is in the hands of all the anti-missile stations between Alaska and Greenland. One minute more and solid fuel infra-red homing anti-missile rockets are on their way; then the enemy missiles will be intercepted and harmlessly destroyed while still high over the Arctic regions. If you look at a map you will see that in its present position Drift Ice Station Zebra is sitting practically on Russia’s missile doorstep. It’s hundreds of miles in advance of the present DEW line – the distant early warning system. Anyway, it renders the DEW line obsolete.’

‘I’m only the office boy around those parts,’ Garvie said quietly. ‘I’ve never heard of any of this before.’

I wasn’t surprised. I’d never heard any of it myself either, not until I’d just thought it up a moment ago. Commander Swanson’s reactions, if and when we ever got to Drift Station Zebra, were going to be very interesting. But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. At present, my only concern was to get there.

‘Outside the Drift Station itself,’ I said, ‘I doubt if a dozen people in the world know what goes on there. But now you know. And you can appreciate how vitally important it is to the free world that this base be maintained in being. If anything has happened to it we want to find out just as quick as possible what has happened so that we can get it operating again.’

‘I still maintain that you’re not an ordinary doctor,’ Garvie smiled. ‘Commander Swanson, how soon can you get under way?’

‘Finish loading the torpedoes, move alongside the Hunley, load some final food stores, pick up extra Arctic clothing and that’s it, sir.’

‘Just like that? You said you wanted to make a slow-time dive out in the loch to check the planes and adjust the underwater trim – those missing torpedoes up front are going to make a difference you know.’

‘That’s before I heard Dr Carpenter. Now I want to get up there just as fast as he does, sir. I’ll see if immediate trim checks are necessary: if not, we can carry them out at sea.’

‘It’s your boat,’ Garvie acknowledged. ‘Where are you going to accommodate Dr Carpenter, by the way?’

‘There’s space for a cot in the Exec’s and Engineer’s cabin.’ He smiled at me. ‘I’ve already had your suitcase put in there.’

‘Did you have much trouble with the lock?’ I inquired.

He had the grace to colour slightly. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a combination lock on a suitcase,’ he admitted. ‘It was that, more than anything else – and the fact that we couldn’t open it – that made the admiral and myself so suspicious. I’ve still one or two things to discuss with the admiral, so I’ll take you to your quarters now. Dinner will be at eight to-night.’

‘I’d rather skip dinner, thanks.’

‘No one ever gets seasick on the Dolphin, I can assure you,’ Swanson smiled.

‘I’d appreciate the chance to sleep instead. I’ve had no sleep for almost three days and I’ve been travelling non-stop for the past fifty hours. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

‘That’s a fair amount of travelling.’ Swanson smiled. He seemed almost always to be smiling, and I supposed vaguely that there would be some people foolish enough to take that smile always at its face value. ‘Where were you fifty hours ago, Doctor?’

‘In the Antarctic’

Admiral Garvie gave me a very old-fashioned look indeed, but he let it go at that.

When I awoke I was still heavy with sleep, the heaviness of a man who has slept for a long time. My watch said nine-thirty, and I knew it must be the next morning, not the same evening: I had been asleep for fifteen hours.

The cabin was quite dark. I rose, fumbled for the light switch, found it and looked around. Neither Hansen nor the engineer officer was there: they must have come in after I had gone to sleep and left before I woke. I looked around some more, and then I listened. I was suddenly conscious of the almost complete quiet, the stillness, the entire lack of any perceptible motion. I might have been in the bedroom of my own house. What had gone wrong? What hold-up had occurred? Why in God’s name weren’t we under way? I’d have sworn the previous night that Commander Swanson had been just as conscious of the urgency as I had been.

I had a quick wash in the folding Pullman-type basin, passed up the need for a shave, pulled on shirt, trousers and shoes and went outside. A few feet away a door opened to starboard off the passage. I went along and walked in. The officers’ wardroom, without a doubt, with one of them still at breakfast, slowly munching his way through a huge plateful of steak, eggs and French fries, glancing at a magazine in a leisurely fashion and giving every impression of a man enjoying life to the luxurious full. He was about my own age, big, inclined to fat – a common condition, I was to find, among the entire crew who ate so well and exercised so little – with close-cropped black hair already greying at the temples and a cheerful intelligent face. He caught sight of me, rose and stretched out a hand.

‘Dr Carpenter, it must be. Welcome to the wardroom. I’m Benson. Take a seat, take a seat.’

I said something, appropriate but quick, then asked: ‘What’s wrong? What’s been the hold-up? Why aren’t we under way?’

‘That’s the trouble with the world to-day,’ Benson said mournfully. ‘Rush, rush, rush. And where does all the hurry get them? I’ll tell you–’

‘Excuse me. I must see the captain.’ I turned to leave but he laid a hand on my arm.

‘Relax, Dr Carpenter. We are at sea. Take a seat.’

‘At sea? On the level? I don’t feel a thing.’

‘You never do when you’re three hundred feet down. Maybe four hundred. I don’t,’ he said expansively, ‘concern myself with those trifles. I leave them to the mechanics.’

‘Mechanics?’

‘The captain, engineer officer, people like those.’ He waved a hand in a generously vague gesture to indicate the largeness of the concept he understood by the term ‘mechanics’. ‘Hungry?’

‘We’ve cleared the Clyde?’

‘Unless the Clyde extends to well beyond the north of Scotland, the answer to that is, yes, we have.’

‘Come again?’

He grinned. ‘At the last check we were well into the Norwegian Sea, about the latitude of Bergen.’

‘This is still only Tuesday morning?’ I don’t know if I looked stupid: I certainly felt it.